[HN Gopher] When Bruce Lee trained with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
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When Bruce Lee trained with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-09-26 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lithub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lithub.com)
| strangelove026 wrote:
| This website is super annoying
|
| https://archive.ph/L4g8w
| relium wrote:
| That's Roger Murdock. He's the co-pilot.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| I'm sorry son but you must have him confused with someone else.
| louthy wrote:
| I absolutely love his performance in Airplane, the facial
| expressions are perfect and the way he looks around after "the
| hell I don't" shows he really has great comedic timing and
| movement.
|
| Incidentally, for anyone that didn't know, the film Airplane
| was an almost shot for shot remake of a film called Zero Hour
| [1] and the copilot in the original film was a famous NFL
| player (Elroy 'Crazy Legs' Hirsch), hence why they've got
| Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to play the copilot in Airplane.
|
| _We have clearance Clarence. Roger, Roger. What 's our vector
| Victor?_
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/8-v2BHNBVCs?feature=shared
| jdeibele wrote:
| Airplane! was just on The Rewatchables, one of The Ringer
| podcasts, and the co-pilot role was originally written for
| Pete Rose but he couldn't do it because they filmed during
| baseball season.
|
| https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/the-
| rewatchables/2025/09/...
|
| https://www.mlb.com/cut4/kareem-abdul-jabbars-role-in-
| airpla...
| louthy wrote:
| It seems funnier with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar because at 7'2"
| the idea he'd be able to slyly get away with moonlighting
| as an airline pilot is even more ridiculous!
| RajT88 wrote:
| I am learning some of these facts in my adulthood, and I
| never thought it possible that film could get any funnier.
|
| There is so many layers of jokes!
| glitchc wrote:
| The article's headline is incorrect. It was Kareem Abdul -Jabbar
| who trained with Bruce Lee. After all, Bruce was the sensei and
| Kareem the student.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I disagree. Bruce Lee treated it as a learning experience as
| well.
|
| > At first, Bruce told Mito that Big Lew was slow, his arms
| were weak, and he wasn't good at chi sao. A reporter who
| witnessed one of their workouts was more impressed with Bruce
| than Big Lew. He wrote that Bruce could "leap and kick over
| Alcindor's head, and says he can defeat him by taking advantage
| of his shin and thigh with a kick."
|
| > But Bruce soon realized all that was irrelevant. Even if he
| could get inside Big Lew's reach, it wasn't easy. And with his
| front kick, Big Lew could rattle the rim of the basket. Bruce's
| Wing Chun skills were all but useless. He joked with Doug
| Palmer, "Try doing chi sao with someone when you're staring at
| his belly button." Bruce called Taky and told him not to focus
| on chi sao in the school anymore.
|
| > "Bruce and I sparred regularly," Kareem remembered. "But we
| didn't compete; I was like a drawing board on which he could
| work out his theories and he was instructing me how to deal
| with people and attack him."
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| Both learned from each other, but if you read the article Lee
| was training Jamar in martial arts. Jamar was not training
| him in basketball, he was just being a tall prop for Lee to
| train himself.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| > Jamar
|
| Side note. Interesting typo. Both B and M are voiced
| bilabial consonants. Are you using a speech-to-text device
| by any chance?
| t-3 wrote:
| If you're going to use a foreign word for teacher, shifu would
| likely be more appropriate than sensei. Lee's martial arts were
| rooted in Chinese tradition, not Japanese.
| ge96 wrote:
| Weird the red panda's name is Master Shifu
| tines wrote:
| Why weird? That movie is also set in China.
| qskousen wrote:
| The master teacher.
| ge96 wrote:
| Ahh I took it as master master
| psnehanshu wrote:
| Yeah, that's "Master Master", just like Chai Tea, which
| means "Tea Tea" and East Timor, which means "East East".
| potbelly83 wrote:
| I never understood the obsession with Bruce Lee as a fighter (not
| considering his acting/stunt scenes here which deserve to be
| judged on their own merit), it seems any half decent Judoka or
| amateur boxer would have probably beaten him in a fight.
| philipallstar wrote:
| A boxer might well have beaten him at boxing
| potbelly83 wrote:
| Yep, but I thought he touted his martial skills as being able
| to beat any discipline.
| _0ffh wrote:
| In a contest where both were allowed to actually _use_
| their own martial arts style.
| t-3 wrote:
| Bruce Lee competed in and won boxing tournaments as a
| teenager...
| riku_iki wrote:
| any reliable record for this?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Well, that's the thing. He never fought any of those people in
| a real competition, so the question could remain in someone's
| mind whether he would have won or not. Combine that with the
| general mystique of Asian martial arts in the 1960s, and his
| early death, that has the makings of a legend.
|
| I think people also like the idea that there can be these
| systems in place for hundreds of years, and an individual can
| come along and intelligence and hard work, can turn the systems
| upside down or develop something better.
| MegaButts wrote:
| > I think people also like the idea that there can be these
| systems in place for hundreds of years, and an individual can
| come along and intelligence and hard work, can turn the
| systems upside down or develop something better.
|
| That's what the Gracie family did with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
| Except they actually proved it worked by dominating the early
| years of UFC before they even introduced weight classes.
| layoric wrote:
| > I think people also like the idea that there can be these
| systems in place for hundreds of years, and an individual can
| come along and intelligence and hard work, can turn the
| systems upside down or develop something better.
|
| My interest over the years of Bruce Lee was much more from
| this perspective. Many stories talk about how hard he
| trained, and other aspects of essentially an underdog story.
| Combined with his communication[0], he comes across very
| thoughtful, and very grounded in many ways. Putting anyone on
| a "legend" status pedestal is always fraught with issues, but
| definitely a figure that inspired a lot of people.
|
| https://youtu.be/uk1lzkH-e4U?si=Uu44M-UC1tKYv894
| delichon wrote:
| Tarantino wanted to prove that his stunt double character was a
| bad-ass, so he had him fight Bruce Lee on a movie studio back
| lot, and win. Tarantino said that Bruce Lee fans dragged him
| through fire, insisting that Lee would have won. Tarantino
| said, it's my fantasy damn it, my guy can win if I want him to!
|
| That's consistent with your comment getting down votes.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| You not liking the thing that I like negatively impacts me
| liking the thing.
| gweinberg wrote:
| In the flick Tarantino made it seem like Lee was all bluff,
| that he could just talk tough and make some fancy moves and
| much bigger guys would all back down. The world doesn't work
| like that.
| delichon wrote:
| Tarantino's Bruce Lee is as stylized as anything else in a
| Tarantino movie. We love him for it.
| ruralfam wrote:
| The article is about two things: Kareem & Bruce, and Kareem &
| racism. Very much like "Sunday Best" (Ed Sullivan & racism) on
| Netflix. If you have a sub, be sure to watch it. Younger folks
| today have a hard time understanding the depth of racism around
| the 60s. Couple of scenes in SB will help to provide some
| understanding. Kudos to Kareem (and Ed) for many things.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Well, I think they're starting to get an idea now.
|
| The old, history doesn't repeat, but rhymes, etc.
| beyondCritics wrote:
| >Bruce helped the young athlete understand his movements in a way
| that seemed to decelerate time. "Bruce showed me how to harness
| some of what was raging inside me and summon it completely at my
| will. The Chinese call it chi; the Japanese, ki; the Indians,
| prana--it is the life force," he said. "I was quite amazed to
| find, after working with Bruce, that when I really had my
| presence of mind, when I did control my life force, that's what I
| saw, things coming at me in slow motion with plenty of time to
| get out of the way.
|
| Seemingly we are learning here something new about Bruce Lee,
| that outside observers can't understand, most notably western
| ones. This decelaration of time also happened to me two times
| spontaneously, when I was attacked on surprise, hence I believe
| this verbatim. In both cases, that got me plenty of time, to
| decide what to do and was able to save myself without a scratch.
| However it never occurred to me,that that had something to do
| with my Chi force...
| spankalee wrote:
| There is no such thing as Chi force, so it wasn't that. The
| perception of time is malleable though.
|
| See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sense-
| time/201707/th... and tons if other articles.
| hobs wrote:
| It's super interesting, I have had it the most in a car
| accident saw my seatbelt snap and slide off of me like it was
| a sleepy snake, watched the stuff in my backseat get hang
| time that would have made MJ jealous, and thankfully managed
| to not die.
| t-3 wrote:
| I had something similar happen when I was a passenger in a
| car accident. I had been asleep and woke up just before the
| impact. I watched the car's front end crumple in slow
| motion and was able to protect my head and "roll" with the
| collision to come out unscathed.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Personally I think our eyes and senses input a lot of
| information then our brains discard what it feels is
| unnecessary without processing it. But some people can train
| the brain to process more of the information like a formula 1
| driver.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I have had the same experience when attacked. A football
| hooligan smashed a bottle on my head from behind. Time slowed
| down. I turned around and could see everything he was doing in
| slow motion and I was completely calm. I knew what he would do
| before he could do it.
|
| I am not a fighter or physically brave, but I completely
| disarmed him, put him in a headlock and threw him to the
| ground.
| qmr wrote:
| Roger Murdock : ROGER MURDOCK. I'm an airline pilot.
|
| Joey : I think you're the greatest, but my dad says you don't
| work hard enough on defense.
|
| [Kareem gets angry]
|
| Joey : And he says that lots of times, you don't even run down
| court. And that you don't really try... except during the
| playoffs.
|
| Roger Murdock : The hell I don't! LISTEN, KID! I've been hearing
| that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I'm out there busting my buns
| every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and
| down the court for 48 minutes!
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(page generated 2025-09-26 23:00 UTC)